HOW TO PROPERLY TREAT VOCALS IN YOUR MIX[PART II]

Cuting out unnecessary frequencies with an EQ.

After placing the vocal in the stereo field, it is important to remove any unnecessary frequencies to ensure a clean mix.

As vocals are an important element of the song, they need their full frequency spectrum. However, you can set a HPF (high-pass filter, also known as low-cut filter) to remove unnecessary low frequency rumble.

You can set the HPF right at the base frequencies of the vocal. This is often somewhere between 100Hz and 300Hz, depending on the vocal. Female vocals often start at a higher frequency than male vocals. To make sure you don’t set the HPF too high, find the lowest note the vocalist sings, and set the HPF right below the lowest frequency of this note.

How to compress vocals smoothly.

Vocals sound best when compressed delicately. If we would compress vocals too hard, they will sound squashed. It would sound like the singer is having difficulty breathing. This can be done for creative effect, but clear vocals are generally not over-compressed.

Use a soft knee and a ratio of around 1,5:1. Both the attack and the release time can be mid-long, about 30 to 130 milliseconds.

We often compress vocals by 1 or 2dB. However, instead of applying this compression at once with one compressor, we will do this in two steps, with two compressors, one after another.

How To Mix Vocals - Serial Compression
HOW TO MIX VOCALS – SERIAL COMPRESSION

This technique is called serial compression and can be used to delicately compress fragile sounds (like vocals), while still achieving the same gain reduction.

Here is how it works.

Say we want to compress a vocal by 2 decibel. We add a compressor, set its attack, release, ratio, a soft knee and bring the threshold down until the sound is compressed by 1dB. Then we bring the make-up gain (or output gain) to +1dB.

When this is set, we add a second compressor and follow the exact same steps.

Both compressors apply 1dB gain reduction, resulting in a total of 2dB gain reduction.

By applying this compression in two less aggressive steps, you can compress vocals much smoother than if you would apply the same gain reduction at once with a single compressor.

Try it, you’ll love it!